Ecocide as a System Crime - Individual and Collective Responsibility

In line with the jurisdictional regime of the International Criminal Court, the ecocide proposal put forward by the Independent Expert Panel convened by the Stop Ecocide Foundation focuses exclusively on individual criminal responsibility, rather than also considering potential collective responsibility for ecocidal practices. However, perhaps even more than the current four core international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression), severe environmental destruction tends to contain a distinctive collective or organisational element.

Tracing back the origins of international criminal law to the Nuremberg trials and beyond, this webinar argues that notions of collective responsibility are not as foreign to the field as they might nowadays seem. Following a short introduction to the concept of ‘system criminality’, the talk explores potential bearers of collective responsibility for ecocide - such as states and corporations - before turning to ways of accounting for collective responsibility under the current international criminal justice system.

About the speaker:
Malte Lauck graduated with an LL.M. in Public International Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 2022 and holds a BA in International Relations from the TU Dresden. Currently, he pursues a second Master’s degree in European Policy at the University of Amsterdam, where he specialises in EU external relations.

He has a keen interest in international criminal law and has previously been an intern at the International Criminal Court.

His LL.M. thesis, around which this webinar is built, was titled “Ecocide as a System Crime” and centred around questions of individual and collective (criminal) responsibility for ecocide, tracing back discussions about the individualisation of responsibility and guilt to the origins of international criminal law.

Supporting the Campaign of Stop Ecocide:

We hope you enjoy our webinar series and would like to draw your attention to how you can support our campaign. Maybe you will find something here that fits your field of activity, or that interests you privately.

International Petition
You can personally support by signing the international petition (in case you haven´t already;):

Manifest to Governments
Organizations (associations, communities, companies, etc.) can sign the Manifesto to Governments:

Business Open Letter
We call on businesses to sign our Open Letter:

EU Petition von WeMove Europe
This is a very important petition to introduce Ecocide as a criminal offence to the EU environmental criminal law, which is currently being revised:

Eu-Position Paper from Stop Ecocide International
Our position paper on the EU Directive on Environmental Criminal Law can be signed by individuals as well as organizations:

Supporting us with your Logo as an Statement on our website/ working with us as an official partner. We are happy to include more organizations as official partners. Please contact us by email if you are interested in one or the other. Here you find the current partnerships:

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A few more pieces of information at the end:

Legal Definition as a proposal for Ecocide from the 12 Members of the expert panel

A selection of prominent supporters:

The development of government support for an ecocide law is gathering a lot of momentum at the moment:

If you have any questions, please contact us:

With kind regards
Stop Ecocide Germany